Sunday, November 23, 2014

During my stay in Delhi from April 2011 to June 2013 I rarely looked up at Sky in night sky to look for celestial bodies except on few Occasions when I used to track ISS or sometimes used to look after Moon rise on Karwa Chauth for my Mom, it was not that I was not interested in watching them but star gazing is bit difficult there because of Pollution and so much of surrounding light which hinders in locating stars. Now I am living in Pune and that too on its periphery where beyond our Colony there is not much civilization and hence not much light source in night. Also sometimes I return late from Office at midnight or early morning and that is the time which is best to watch stars. I keep on my Smarphone Google Skymap app, everytime I am intrigued to any Star or Planet or any celestial body I just open that app and point that towards that body and it tells accurately about what that body is and then I google about it to know more about it.When I was kid and living in Betul(M.P.) one of my Father's Colleague had a Telescope with him which he made by himself, one fine day he called my Father at his home for star gazing, luckily my Father took my with himself. After reaching his home we straight went at the roof where he had placed his Telescope. If I correctly remembers the Moon had just set and we missed watching craters of the moon but there was something else he pointed out to, after some adjustments he called my father to look into the eyepiece of Telescope and it was Saturn, I waited for my turn to come up and finally it came and I watched on, you can see the rings of Saturn clearly and it was bright both rings and planet itself, the planet about which you only read in text books and saw images of it and its rings was there in front of you and it looked so real this time. That opened my mind a little about Astronomy. Also it is such a privilege to be born in a country which is one of the few nations which our doing a great job in Space Explorations. We have all grown up with how successful the PSLV program has been for ISRO which launches satellites of not only us but many other countries although the heavier version of it GSLV has some shortfalls but now it is on its path and GSLV Mach III version would soon be launched next month which would open possibilities of sending a Manned mission to space in future. Needless to say the success of Chandryan and Mangalyaan(MOM) which made people of outside world to think about India beyond the Cows, Corruption and Cricket.Also today I want to discuss about the astonishing marvels that had happened in Space travel in the entire world. US and USSR are the pioneers in Space technology. We all know Yuri Gagarin and Valentina Tereshkova both from Soviet union were first man and woman in Space but Alan Shepard from was the first US astronaut and second person after Yuri to travel in Space. The race to send the first person in space was so intense that Yuri made it to space only less than a month a before Alan. Soviet won this battle but US had to show their supremacy over them. This culminated Apollo mission to land a man on Moon.I would not go into details of Apollo mission firstly there are lots of things and second I don't know much about it too. While I guess we all know that in 1969 on board Apollo 11 mission Neil Armstrong became the first person to land on Moon followed by Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins remained in the lunar orbit while Neil and Buzz explored the moon but not many of today's generation have any idea that total of 12 US astronauts have landed on moon on six Apollo missions in between 1969 and 1972 and in later mission astronauts have spend days and nights on moon and they also had rovers to roam around moon.Eugene Cernan Commander of Apollo 17 mission was the last person to be on moon now that is a fact to remember. Little we did know that before Apollo 11 landed on Moon few months back three Astronauts on board Apollo 8 mission became first human beings to leave earths orbit and they went towards Moon and became first human beings to enter lunar orbit and spent around a day in lunar orbit and they were also the first human beings to watch the dark side of moon in person.We discussed about Alan Shepard the first US Cosmonaut in Space there is one more fact left about him, he commandeered the Apollo 14 mission on moon and became the fifth person to land on Moon and he was the oldest too at the age of 47. There is one more thing I would like to tell that there are three astronauts who have been on voyage to Moon twice Eugene Cernan and John Young orbited the moon on Apollo 10 mission and they both landed on moon on Apollo 17 and 16 mission respectively, Jim Lovell I should say was the most unlucky astronaut on Apollo mission firstly he flew in lunar orbit on Apollo 8 mission which did not intended to land on moon just like Apollo 10 mission also he was to land on fateful Apollo 13 mission on moon but due to an explosion on his way to moon he returned with the crew after just circling once around moon.All the missions that landed on moon had three astronauts two of them had to land on lunar surface while the other one would revolve around in lunar orbit and did his experiments from there. So its been around 40 years that we have been on moon and after that no human has ever left earths orbit which I found to be a bit strange but this was all done because of the competition that was between Soviets and Americans, one of my wish is to watch a person land on Mars in my lifetime that would be so fun.There is so much to talk about astronomy the planets, the moons of the planets, the interplanetary missions, the exo planets and so on but I think I should stop here today. I hope some people who have read this post might have gained a little more about the outside world.

Saturday, September 20, 2014

Don't think many people missed my writing but still there are some who will encourage me to write and Arti from My Yatra Diary is amongst such persons. I know she'll be inquiring why I have not written off late and then one day there I saw her tweet and I was embarrassed. Before starting this post I had a look on my blog and checked when did I last wrote here and it was 9 months back :( that is a long time, checked the traffic of the blog it seems to be fine but still there is a dip.

I think getting a good habit ( like blogging) is very hard to come but on the other hand very easy to go, so here I am back again to rejuvenate some life in my blog and in myself too. There are very few things in my life that I am proud of but my Blog is exception. When I will retire from my working life and will look back on how it went this Blog will help me and maybe some others too on how I fared with my life.

Most of the people I am close to (family,friends and colleagues) do know that I sometimes write and from time to time will discuss that they too wants to write something and would ask for advise and here I am who has not written anything from past nine months, it is not that I don't get time to write but its my laziness that prevents me too write.

I came here today to write but then I was not having any specific topic so what should I tell you today ? Okay I will brief you about what is going on in my life.

Its been around 15 months that I have been in Pune, living with friends and not with my parents. Initially it was hard but then I got used to living without my parents. Daily from past 15 months I call at my home at around 10 in the night, my Father will be back from his office and I will talk to both Mom and Dad daily discussing how their day went and describing my day to them. Telephone does help in bridging gaps.

I have made three trips to Delhi in this interval and have enjoyed every bit there and I do not miss to meet my Dear Friend Manish whenever I am there in Delhi , will discuss about our life ( he got married last February), the day when I meet him is arguably one of the best day of my year. I cannot discuss everything what is going in my life with anyone but with one person and that is Manish and yeah its been ten years that we are friend now and I know this friendship will be going till end.

Oh I forgot to tell you about Pune, If you'll ask me what is one thing I love about Pune ? my answer would be its Climate, there my parents in Delhi are cursing the loss of rain and sweaty climate and here in Pune you have perfect weather, I don't remember when did I last sweat ( ah remember when I was in Delhi last July), but sadly that is the only thing ( or one of few things ) I prefer about Pune. I miss Food, the chilly winter, my parents and Friends and many more things. The day I come here back from home I start planning the next trip, I will keep an eye on Flight tickets and the day I see a bump in price and I will book them and my countdown starts. Soon I will be back on a trip to Delhi and if time permits I will visit maybe Meerut and my Nanihal Rampur too.

My Parents are desperately looking for a girl for me seeing some of my friends are getting married, I don't know how life will be when you get married, there will be more responsibilities I know but then that is part and parcel of your life. But at present I am pretty much single in near future.

Hopefully I will be spending more of my time here with you guys, the hard part is to open the text box of your blog after that I do not have to think much and words are automatically typed (joking). So keep looking for this space and I will be back soon.

Sunday, January 5, 2014

I have not spent much time here on my beloved Blog last season for which I am the only person to be blamed. It only takes about 1 hr for me to write a post here and there are 168 hrs in a whole week so time should not be a constraint for this but I guess laziness and indiscipline could be the cause behind it.

I am trying to remember how 2013 started for me I was in Delhi and winters were going on I was desperately looking for a new job and had no clue how I will be able to get one but then there are certain things over which you don't have much control they just happens and it happened for me. During early summer in March and April I started giving interviews unfortunately I could give interview in only two companies. For the first one I cleared most of the rounds and at the last moment was waiting for the call from HR of that company I waited and waited and there was no call I was the only person that was calling.

Then came second company and some how I again cleared all the rounds there but this time I was offered job in a span of week after giving my first interview to them. I had to join in Pune about thousand five hundred kms from Delhi I was elated to be there, my Father's working place head office is also in Pune and I have heard lot of things about Pune from him and wanted to visit it and also I never lived alone in my life which fascinated me and I was up for it but then you had to be physically in a situation to have a feel how it looks like to be. The day I left my home and came here I got to know how it feels like to be alone in a place which is not known to you and you don't have anybody to look to. But fortunately I had some good friends here waiting for me and after six months here I feel somewhat relaxed.

I miss weather of Delhi yes it is harsh but in Pune you almost have a monotonous weather not much have changed since I came here except rain have stopped now and you can easily move around outside. I don't each much outside here not a fan of local food.

Oh yeah this year I spent some money on Gadgets too, In March got myself an iPad Mini which I left at my home in Delhi and I think its a waste of money doesn't fills much purpose then in August got a Nexus 4 mobile phone which I personally think is the best mobile phone in that range I can do almost all stuff that I was doing on my iPad and plus can use it for calling too. Then later at the end of year I got this Dell laptop on which I am typing this post at very good bargain almost at the same price at which I got Nexus 4, I am using Ubuntu 13.10 OS on it which is breath of fresh air and is linux based which also comes into my domain knowledge too so hopefully I will be doing some good stuff with this laptop.

Have made some good friends in my Office I have to say the more people you meet the more you learn in life. I miss my friends in North. Manish came back to north after spending some years in Allahabad and irony is that as he shifted there I had to shift out, he'll be starting new phase of his life pretty soon and he has all my good wishes, we had such a great time in College and our friendship has continued from there and is going strong.

Looking ahead this year I have to learn a lot and do lot of things, so many things are there to which I am looking after to do hope I will be able to finish some of those and I wish to update you about them on my Blog here.

Winds of change have started to blow in the nation for good and hopefully at the end of year we'll get something better than what we have at present.

Lastly It has been a difficult year for my parents as I moved away from them but I guess with time they have come to terms now, I visited them last month and we had great time and also met my lovely niece and Sister, I'll again visit Delhi in coming months it is an amazing city.

Friday, October 18, 2013

As you grow up you to tend to think about your past a lot, I personally do think about my past how my life got progressed and changed. The most bleak memory that you have is of your early childhood days. For most people it differ what is the earliest you remember, some people would remember instances when they were one or two years old and some I know who don't even remember much about their time when they were 4 or 5.My Father who has seen around 55 springs in his life still have memories dating back when he was 1 or 2. When we both sit back together sometimes we talk about our past, he would tell me how things were very cheap and in a Rupee you could purchase whole load of stuff. He would tell me about our relatives whom I could not see. My Father in his Childhood was pretty independent, the place where I was born and most of his Childhood was spent Deoband once he went on his own and got admission in his School.He was born in a small Village Called Tikola which is near to Roorkee, but the nearest town to Tikola was Deoband so he used to come alongside my Grand Father to Deoband many times. At that time Deoband looked a big city to him as this was the biggest place he had ever been to. There was electricity he could see Bulbs showering lights everywhere, markets,Toys and sweets to eat. There is one particular incident that he has told me often of his Childhood which I would like to share with you today.I guess he would have been 3 or 4 years Old at that time, he came to Deoband with my Grand Father, As my Grand Father had some work he left my Father at a Photographer's studio stating him he would return soon. That Photographer must be a known person to my Grand Father.My Father waited for him reluctantly but as time grew he became impatient and started to feel insecure, I can understand what his feeling would have been at that time even at this age when I left my home I felt like to cry and return at my home and he was just a toddler at that time. Tears started pouring from his eyes - seeing my impatient Father Photographer tried to console him and with an instrument[ which I don't remember] which he made it look like a Telephone he made a fake call to my GrandFather that " Masterji your Son is missing you and please come early he is waiting for you ". Some sanity prevailed and my Father got bit relaxed , within no time my Grand Father arrived there and they returned to their village and my Father thought it was because of that call my Grand Father returned early.Many other people would relate to this story as well, when I was a child myself the biggest fear of myself would be what would happen if I get lost or lose my family. I would not allow my Father to board out of train when our family was on any journey thinking what would happen if train left without him but he would still go out at most of the stations when there was a halt, I could also have gone out with him but then I preferred to stay with my Mom and Sister thinking what would happen if train left without my Father and me leaving my Mom and Sister alone.As I live alone here in Pune without my Family I tend to think more about my Family and then these kind of instances come to my mind. Which I better jolt down here.